Heat management plays an important role in an outdoor lighting system. The outdoor lighting system may employ high-flux lighting elements (e.g., LEDs) and the temperature of the lighting elements can affect the luminaire efficacy and performance, and therefore maintaining a low temperature at a junction of the lighting elements and the housing of the outdoor lighting system is critical.
In a current example, LED-based roadway outdoor lighting systems have a same housing for a total range of system power, and the thermal condition varies based on the actual system power. Thus, these types of lighting systems are designed thermally for high system power. Therefore, in low system power cases, the housing provides unnecessary cooling and increased costs compared to use of a smaller housing.